Morituri Te Salutamus
by Annakovsky
Summary: Nancy, in the Wishverse, on being cannon fodder.


SUMMARY: Nancy, in the Wishverse, on being cannon fodder.  
  
SPOILERS: For the Season 3 episode, "The Wish"  
  
RATING: PG  
  
DISCLAIMER: All characters, settings, universe, etc, belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy.  
  
ARCHIVING: Probably, but ask first so I know where it is.  
  
FEEDBACK: Please! Send to annakovsky@hotmail.com  
  
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Morituri Te Salutamus  
  
by Annakovsky  
  
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There are two kinds of people in the... group, I guess. Seems like we should have a name for ourselves, but we don't. Oz might say to me, "You going to the library this afternoon?" but we're not, like, the X-Men or the Thundercats or anything. The monsters call us the White Hats, but we call ourselves nothing. In my own head I think of us as "We who are about to die", but I never say that out loud.  
  
Except once, the first time I thought of it. We were arming up in the library and Giles said "Ready?" And I said "We who are about to die salute you," you know, like a Roman gladiator, raising my crossbow in a fake salute. It was a joke when I started saying it but by the end of the sentence it wasn't anymore and Giles looked shaken. I never said that again.   
  
Anyway. Two kinds of people in the group. The first are the adrenaline junkies or the hero wannabes. The ones who get off on the danger, or the ones who have fantasies about saving the world. They never last long; either they figure out that saving the world isn't as fun as it looks or they get killed. Like that one kid - what was his name? You know, the blond, nervous looking kid. Tucker's brother.   
  
The other kind are the ones who've lost so much they don't care anymore. Actually, they don't last so long either. None of us last long. But these are the ones who show up after you see the obit for their whole family, or after their best friend gets vamped and kills their girlfriend or whatever. Most of us are in this category, though we never talk about it. Sadness already hangs over the group so thick that it's hard to breathe, so there doesn't seem much point in, like, having some big discussion about it.   
  
I don't know which category Mr. Giles fits into, exactly. He's sad, it's true. But... he doesn't fit. I don't know why he doesn't just move - it's not like he's a Sunnydale native, obviously, so he could just get the hell out of here. He never talks about why he came. Though we're glad he did, I guess. But what we do more and more seems to be like a kid building a wall out of sand on the beach to keep the tide back.   
  
The monsters went through a phase where they'd say "Resistance is futile" when we'd rescue somebody - they'd hiss it out as they backed away from our crosses. Guess they thought it was funny or something. Very glad they gave that up - it was annoying as hell and also, apparently, true.  
  
Group has been getting smaller and smaller lately. We've never been big, but in our heyday, there were nearly twenty of us. Now there are three: Larry, Oz and me. Four, with Giles. I'm the last of the girls.   
  
I will die soon. No one will mourn me much, I know - we don't get too attached to each other anymore, not since the big massacre last year. Like, last week Michael got his throat ripped out, and it sucked and all, but nobody cried.   
  
I never cry anymore, though I always feel on the verge of tears. I can feel them all piling up in my head, weight behind my eyes, skin tight, that stretched feeling. But I haven't cried since before I found Mom... yeah. Since before.   
  
The other day I was in the library with Giles, cleaning some of the weapons after school. Thinking about dying, like I do most days. Don't know if I have a death wish exactly, but when you know it's coming, no matter what you do, there doesn't seem to be much point in thinking about, like, who you're going to the Winter Brunch with.   
  
So I asked Giles if he believed in Heaven. Because I don't know if I do.   
  
And Giles looked at me like he was really seeing me, for once. I mean, sometimes we have camaraderie, and I know he cares, in an abstract kind of way. But usually he's pretty distant - none of us can afford to care too much, after all. The reality is that we're not so much the White Hats as the Red Shirts; the guys who die screaming in the first act. The Charge of the Light Brigade. We who are about to die.   
  
"Heaven?" he asked. He looked sorry for me, then, and sort of loving. "Do you?"  
  
I shrugged and said, "I believe in Hell." And there was another one of those sentences that started out a joke and didn't end that way.   
  
He took off his glasses, polished them. "Yes." He just held them in his hand when he was done, looking tired and beaten down.   
  
"So?" I asked, after he didn't speak. 'Cause for some reason I really wanted to know what he thought about this, like it made a difference. Like if he believed in it, then maybe it was true; maybe I could just lean on his believing, not have to believe myself. Like if there was someone here who could still imagine a different world, a better place, then it might just be possible.   
  
"Yes," he said. "I believe in Heaven."  
  
I felt kind of choked up then, for some reason. My throat was dry and the tears always hovering in the back of my head got closer to the front, almost to my eyes. "Why?" I asked. My voice sounded shaky.   
  
"Because I have to," he said. "Because if there isn't...." he trailed off. We both stood there for awhile, looking down. "But there is," he said finally.   
  
And I believed him - stupid as it seems in the face of everything, retarded as the image of puffy clouds and pudgy babies with harps is. Because Giles doesn't lie.   
  
And after that, I saw it, sometimes. Little moments where I could believe in it. Like when Oz sits on the stairs with his acoustic guitar and plays, sunlight flowing dustily down into the library, and we're all there; when no one turns a page because we're all listening. When Giles puts his hand on my shoulder briefly after a patrol, using the touch to say he's glad I'm alive for one more night. When Larry is joking around and gives me a big hug, spinning me until we're both dizzy. These small snatches of happiness. Then I can almost believe, because it feels close by.  
  
Hail Caesar, we who are about to die salute you.   
  
Hail Mary, full of grace. Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.  
  
Hail. 


End file.
